You fool. How did you not see this coming? Weren't you keeping track of how many Thursdays have gone by this month? Well if you weren't, then you either aren't in your last semester or you haven't been reading CollegeHumor long enough (or, more accurately, both). To bring you up to speed, the number is three and that means one thing: today is no ordinary day. No, friends, today is National High Five Day. It's back like herpes and ten times more contagious.

The link between this holiday and an STD may or may not end there, but what never ends is the undying growth of NH5D's popularity. Why does this holiday keep growing every year? Was it the plug on the Tony Danza Show two years ago? Andrew W.K.'s official endorsement? San Diego's mayor begrudgingly declaring it a town holiday? While these things are equally amazing and dumbfounding, there is a better way to explain why lemonade stands and open palms keep springing up on campuses nationwide every third Thursday of April.

Some things are inherently college. It was the Neil Armstrong of college kids just like you or me who first discovered that you could drink from a keg faster if you were held upside down and drank straight from the tap. It was the Jonas Salk of college kids that said you should put French fries, mozzarella sticks, AND chicken fingers on a cheesesteak. And it was probably the Lewis of college kids sometime in the 1800s who looked at an ink-covered quill lying next to his passed out friend Clark and had the ingenuity to first make the connection. National High Five Day is one of these great moments in higher education. The idea for NH5D came about in a drunken rant that was surprisingly remembered the next day and, perhaps more surprisingly, acted upon the next week. Seven years later the celebration of college's favorite greeting/expression /heterosexual show of affection every spring has become a sacred college institution.

But this article is not a history lesson. It is a call to action. In a few short years, we'll be in a community in which drinking more than 15 beers is not an accomplishment, it's alcoholism (pfft). We'll be trading a place that gives out free condoms for a place that gives out free money to CEOs of failing companies. And we sure as hell won't have a chance to set up a lemonade stand, skirt our day's responsibilities, dole out high fives, and use a made-up holiday as an excuse to hit on freshman girls. If that doesn't give you a sense of urgency, I don't know what will.

The holiday is about exercising your right, no, your duty to devote a day to something that is at once both totally ridiculous and absolutely necessary: a celebration of an act of celebration. So after you finish this article, round up your friends and hit the quad. You have a whole day ahead of you to raise that hand up vertically, look a fellow student in the eye, and connect for one brief moment of understanding. The weather forecast is looking good, girls are wearing less, and you can drink outside tonight after you're all high fived out. And by the way, when Tony Danza talked about National High Five Day on his show, he said someone should change the name to Slap Me Some Skin Day. Look at your local listings. You see him anywhere on TV now? Don't fuck with NH5D, or else you'll end up like him. You have no option but to celebrate NH5D this year and when it's all over, you'll finally understand why it's spreads as fast as hepa- alright, I swear it's not an STD.
Oh and check out National High Five Day on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nh5d